With the overall Minecraft community abuzz with the news of The Sift, it brings up all the possibilities of this dimension. Is it a soft, fuzzy world? A realm that lures you into a false sense of security? Is everything that we see now just a facade to an evil below? We don’t know, but all we can do now is speculate with what we do know.
Of course, if you live in the modded Minecraft scene, a new dimension is just another world to the collection of various other worlds. Yet, when I see discussions of dimension mods, it’s almost always discussing how intricate they are and how each one brings their own charm to the table. Even when there are similar settings, their themes couldn’t be any more distant. What is this allure to dimension mods?
What is a Dimension Mod?
Ok, before we get into the deep discussion about dimension mods, we need to establish what I mean. A dimension mod, by name, is a mod that adds a new dimension to the game. A dimension in this case is something like the Nether, an entirely different plane of existence. Now, mods can use dimensions in all sorts of ways, such as space exploration and using dimensions for planets, or creating pockets of space for storage or utility. For this blog, I want to talk about dimension mods that create new worlds.
You are probably more than familiar with a dimension mod already. Mods such as Twilight Forest, The Aether, Tropicraft, I could keep going but there are too many to name. If you can explore a new world, it’s a dimension mod.
What makes a Dimension Mod so special?
Consider how many worlds Minecraft has, or had before 1.0 dropped. We had an Overworld, then the Nether in Alpha, and then The End around the late Beta days and the final release. It’s not a lot, which means we could have so many more kinds of worlds. What we have now is endless possibilities.
The Aether, as one example, was based on an unused world type that eventually became The End. It’s a world above the clouds, an open space of floating islands. It’s simple, a classic, you’ll find so many people trying to make an Aether portal without the mod installed. A dimension mod is also not constrained to speculation about the base game. Twilight Forest is another classic mod, but it’s all about an overgrown world of trees, basked in the, well, twilight. It simply brings to the table a mystical world all about exploration, and plenty of boss fights to go around.
That’s what makes a dimension mod special. The idea isn’t just wishing for something that Minecraft is missing, rather it’s about what could exist. A dimension of bees, or a dark and dreary swamp, not to mention what could be done with the Void, the area below the boundaries of the game.
I myself was inspired into making a dimension mod, with almost no coding experience behind me. My vision was a world made of crystals, but with it being a dimension, I could do anything. Where most mods are constrained by a specific theme, a dimension mod is like a playground of ideas. I could play around with entity mechanics, try making a new weapon, or maybe I just want to create an aesthetically pleasing biome. The most important part, however, is that I could make as many new blocks or entities as I want, as long as it fit the vision I wanted, and I was not constrained to what felt “vanilla”.
This is also the most important part about a dimension mod: their freedom of creativity. Minecraft has a particular progression system, but once you create a new world, you don’t have to abide by what Minecraft does. You can roll your own punches, as both a mod developer and a player. It’s what makes dimension mods stand out from each other - you can look at a single screenshot and say “yes, I know what dimension this is” because each dimension has their own charm.
Why make a Dimension Mod?
I mentioned that creating a dimension is like having a playground. You could make a gallery of entities and give them all a home in a new realm, or you could create wondrous megastructures and build the world around that. Whatever you think could be added to a dimension, the freedom to do whatever you want is there. The point being is that a dimension mod can also be a good exercise in learning how to add new features into a mod by having all the control you want.
The same could be said for myself with my own dimension. I wanted to add some of my favourite crystals into Minecraft, then one day I wondered how these crystals would be obtained. Could I have made a simple mining mod where I added a bunch of ores and supplementary tools? Maybe, but you know what would be more interesting? An entire world of minerals and crystals! Trees of stone and agate, water packed with salt, even the entities within are all made of minerals.
It’s a fairly similar story across many other dimension mods. You can see various RPG elements, or mechanics most unusual for the base game. Some dimensions make it hard to survive by adding features exclusive to hampering exploration without the right equipment. It’s all about having an idea, thinking about how to implement it, and realising perhaps what you need is a new land.
Why aren’t there more Dimension Mods?
Many dimension mods bring to the table a new, tailored experience to the game. Each one does something a little different, a new reason to go exploring. It’s because of this unique intrigue that also means there aren’t more mods.
Having made one and contributed to a few, dimension mods can be fun to work with, but they are demanding on effort. If you have ever seen a datapack for worldgen, you’ll notice that there are a lot of moving parts with generating features. There’s the terrain, the biome placement, then all kinds of features such as structures, biome decorations, and don’t forget the blocks and entities needed to create an immersive experience. All these little, separate parts need to be woven together to create the perfect world.
It’s why dimension mods often have a team behind them. Some of the more tech-savvy creators aren’t too good with creating assets, and some artists need someone to help get their ideas off the ground. The more developed of mods will also have their own sound artist behind the sound effects or even music. A good dimension mod requires a lot of time and effort.
That’s not to say a dimension mod is impossible. Far from it, actually, as those aforementioned datapacks help with setting up your own dimension without needing a mod. Of course, mods make it easier to make a fully custom experience. It all comes down to the passion one or a group of people have for their own project.
How many Dimension Mods are there?
If we add up every dimension mod that has ever existed, there are dozens of them. They could be worlds to explore while you go to the end game, they could be the end game themselves, or it’s something to do to pass the time. We even made a blog detailing just some of the dimension mods that do exist.
That all being said, Minecraft does update frequently, so the availability and quality of a mod highly depends. Some game versions may only have a couple dimensions, others may have a bounty of dimensions but from early stages of life, or in some cases, the dimension mod wasn’t available yet. This does add an interesting layer of complexity for dimension mods as a modpack can have various combinations of worlds to explore.
If you wanted to check out every dimension mod that exists, you’re going to need a way to quickly switch between different game versions and access full file control on your server. We make every step of the process easy and accessible, giving you options to change a Minecraft version on the go, ways to generate new worlds on each update, and full file control to upload, download, and manage mods on a server! Want to get started? Check out our affordable server plans, then head over to our handy guides for details on how you can manage your server and create your own little multiverse of worlds.